House not habitable

Flames spread from carport to roof truss

The fire department had to remove parts of the roof.

(Bild: stock.adobe.com)

The Dornbirn fire department was called out to a large-scale operation on Monday afternoon. A fire had broken out next to a residential building for as yet unknown reasons. The flames quickly spread to the carport and then to the roof truss of a semi-detached house.

When the firefighters arrived at the house at around 4 p.m., the fire was spreading further and further into the roof truss. The fire department immediately began extinguishing the fire from the outside. At the same time, a breathing apparatus unit went into the building to investigate. It quickly became clear that there were no more people in the building. 

However, the owner of the house and another person had already been exposed to quite a bit of smoke and had to be taken to Dornbirn hospital with suspected smoke inhalation. Both were lucky: they were allowed to leave the city hospital after outpatient treatment.

The extinguishing work proved to be more difficult. In order to fight the flames, parts of the tiled roof had to be opened by the fire department. Once the fire had been extinguished, the roof was provisionally covered. 

The Dornbirn fire department was deployed with nine vehicles and 75 men. The exact cause of the fire is not yet known and investigations are ongoing.